Forevermore: A True Fiction

It had taken her many hours and many trials to reach the forest at the top of the hill. Unsightly creatures made their homes in the tearing thorns that lined the only path, and even what seemed sure footfalls would mysteriously not find purchase; her clothes were torn at even where she could see no spine or bramble, and the rushing rivers that crossed her path were a thousand fathoms deep. And all for an idea that she did not even truly believe, a story scrawled out over and over on the backs of her school notebooks, changing in the telling each time; half-forgotten, or had there been nothing to remember at all? Yet even though she knew there was no truth to it, she went there anyway.

In the endless years that followed she would never be able to explain why. What perverse compulsion makes one do something they know is an illusion?*

She was surprised and disappointed and overjoyed all at once to see, when she reached the hilltop forest, a lone white mare haloed in the radiance of the setting sun. No, it was no unicorn that stood before her, yet all the other details of her story were intact: if one in dire need makes the journey alone, and reaches the top of the hill just as the evening sun is streaming through the forest up ahead, before the trees, outlined in the sun, will be a golden unicorn. None of pure heart can resist its call, the story went on to say, which is as the mewling of babies and cries of falling stars, and will draw them helpless to its side; where if they bow before it, it will walk beside them, guarding and unseen, forevermore.

It was not a unicorn, but still there was a magic-- not true magic, but a fascination; the mundane substitute-- in seeing so much of her story fulfilled. She stayed there until the sun ought to have long past fallen, gazing at the mare outlined in golden light; and the forest grew cold and all around it grew dark, but the radiant light remained, and she thought not of any of this strangeness, for there was no awareness in her mind of anything but that lone, bright creature, whose presence permeated all the forest, and the grass that grew up in between her toes though she had been there but hours, and the blood within her heart.

It seemed like eternity before her feet would move, and when they did it seemed like there had never been time at all, and each step was an eternity and an instant and the completion of one more perfection, and bright meadow flowers grew up in her footsteps as she passed. And before her and beside her now was not a unicorn, nor a plain white mare, but the benevolence of pure magic, which shone upon and around her and bound her soul in ribbons and vines, that she might never again be separated from it, might never again know the pain and weight of solitude, but would walk as its companion forevermore.


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*There is an answer to this question. Feel free to ask.